The Stake

They both peered out from the sides of the window.

The man was running away, hair streaming out behind him, the bow pumping up and down in his right hand, a quiver of arrows and some kind of cloth bag bouncing against his back.

Pete crouched. He braced his arms on the windowsill and took careful aim.

“You can’t shoot him in the back!”

“Watch me.”

Larry was ready to knock the gun aside, but an image of Bonnie filled his mind. He saw her alive, sleeping in her bed, the weird old man creeping toward her with a hammer and stake.

Pete fired.

His bullet kicked up a puff of dust a yard behind the sprinting lunatic.

His next shot chopped through the bow. The weapon was ripped from the man’s hand, its string flinging the broken ends high, whipping them together.

“All right!” Pete cried out. “Now we’ve got him!”

As they climbed out the window, Larry saw him leap and drop out of sight.

“He’s in the ravine,” Pete said.

“Yeah.” The ravine. The stream bed where they’d found the old jukebox and the campfire with the remains of the coyote.

They started walking toward it, Pete reloading.

“We won’t have to shoot him now,” Larry said.

“Right. We’ll take him alive, ask a few questions. This’ll be great. We’ll take him to the cops. Man, we’ll be the guys that solved the disappearances.”

“Yeah,” Larry muttered. He knew he should feel good. They’d come here for Uriah. Pretty soon, they’d find out whether this was him.

Certainly wasn’t the Uriah of his nightmares.

Probably him, though.

The guy who murdered Bonnie and the other two girls.

They’d have him. Alive. He could tell them everything.

But Larry didn’t feel good. He felt as if he were being strangled by fear.

Pete grinned at him. “You look like shit, pardner. You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Nothing to be scared of, man. What’s he gonna do, throwarrows at us?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t like this.”

“I do. Fantastic!”

Maybe we won’t be able to find him, Larry thought. This is a guy who eats coyotes down there. Probably knows the ravine like the back of his hand. Maybe has special hiding places.

Or, once at the bottom, he might’ve taken off running in either direction. By the time we get there, he could be long gone.

God, I hope so.

Get him for Bonnie. He killed her. Make him pay.

When they were thirty or forty feet from the rim of the gap, Pete waved toward the left. “You go that way.”

“Huh?”

“We’ll split up and box him in.”

“Split up? You outa your mind?”

Halting, Pete scowled at him. “Just do it.”

“No! If we split up, one of us’ll get nailed. Happens in every shitty splatter film I’ve ever seen.”

“This ain’t a fuckin‘ movie.”

“We stick together, and that’s final.”

Looking disgusted, Pete shook his head. “Okay, okay. Shit.”

“Besides, if we aren’t together down there...”

In the corner of Larry’s vision something moved. He jerked his eyes toward the ravine. Glimpsed the head and arm of the one-eyed wildman, the face leering, the arm snapping forward as it hurled a rock. “Watch out!” he shouted.

Ducking, he looked at Pete.

Pete ducked as he brought up his revolver. The rock caught the bridge of his nose, knocked his head back and bounced to the side. His hat flew off. He stumbled backward a few steps like an outfielder going for a high fly ball. Blood spilled over his mustache, dribbled into his open mouth and spread down his chin. The gun fell from his hand. He flopped to the ground. The back of his head thumped a flat slab of granite.

Larry cringed watching all this, as if he could feel the sharp impacts himself.

Then he remembered Uriah. Or whoever it was.

He snapped his head sideways.

The man was gone.

He dashed for the edge of the ravine.

I’m gonna kill you, you rotten bastard! his mind shrieked. Look what you did! What’m I gonna tell Barbara? Shit shit shit! You piece of shit, I’m gonna blow your fucking brains all over the desert! Wasn’t enough you had to kill Bonnie, you goddamn fucking lunatic!

He teetered on the rim and gazed down. The embankment below was steep, cluttered with boulders and scrub brush. But nobody was on it. Nobody was running along the flat bottom of the stream bed.

“Where are you, you shit!” he yelled.

Then he was scrambling down, dodging the rocks and bushes in his way, arms waving for balance, digging his heels into gravel, skidding over the hard-packed earth. Halfway down he slipped. His rump pounded the slope. He slid on the seat of his jeans, throat going tight and tears filling his eyes. A boulder stopped his descent. He pushed himself up, stepped onto the outcropping, blinked his eyes clear and scanned the area below him.

No trace of Uriah.

But a lot of hiding places: boulders, thickets, deep cuts eroded into the walls of the ravine.

The bastard might be anywhere, he thought.

Or not even down here at all.

Instead of heading for the bottom after he threw the rock, he might’ve gone acrossthe slope.

A chill swept up Larry’s spine. He twisted around.

Nobody there.

But he felt exposed, vulnerable.

Might be anywhere. I’ve gotta get out of here.

The walnut grips of his revolver felt slippery. He switched the gun to his left hand, rubbed the right dry on a leg of his jeans and wrapped it around the revolver again. Then, with quick glances all around him, he began to climb the embankment.

Might be anywhere.

He snapped his head from side to side. He glanced behind him. He squinted at the top. Behind him. To the left. To the right. Whenever he looked one way, he imagined Uriah leaping up from the opposite direction.

It’s like backing out of a tight space in a parking lot, he thought. A busy lot. Other cars backing out of other spaces.

Exactly the same.